Thomas Dudley and Edwin Stephens white plaque

This white commemorative plaque records: R v Dudley and Stephens. Thomas Dudley and Edwin Stephens were detained before trial in cells under this building which was then Falmouth Police Station. Their vessel Mignonette sailing from Southampton to Sydney, sank in heavy seas 1600 miles off the Cape of Good Hope on 5th July 1884. After 20 days in an open tender in desperation they killed and consumed a third, almost like-expired crewmember. They were rescued on 29th July by the barque Montezuma bound for Hamburg which delivered them to Falmouth on 6th September 1884. By a directed special verdict of the jury their case was referred from Exeter Assizes to a specially convened panel of the High Court in London presided over by the Lord Chief Justice. Although convicted of murder and sentenced to death, this was commuted by the Crown to six months imprisonment without hard labour. The case confirmed the legal principle that no matter how dire the circumstances, murder could never be justified. That principle was not relaxed until the extreme circumstances of the 21st century case of the Siamese twins Mary and Jodie.

Thomas Dudley and Edwin Stephens were crew members whose desperate act of cannibalism to survive after their ship sank led to the landmark legal case R v Dudley and Stephens. This case established that necessity could not be pleaded as a defense for murder, setting a significant legal precedent.